New SpatiaLABS on Search and Rescue Now Available

Four new SpatiaLABS are now available, focused on teaching spatial thinking and analysis through a compelling topic--search and rescue--and a compelling location--a national park. To access the labs, use this story map, click on Social Sciences, and see the four listed on the left side. They are also viewable on the map, located in Yosemite National Park. All are authored by Paul Doherty, who has had a fascinating career with roles ranging from GIS consultant at Eagle Technology to park ranger for the National Park Service to disaster response lead at Esri.

In the first of these four labs, you will use search and rescue incident locations to create an interactive web map and web mapping application in ArcGIS Online to explore the distribution of incidents in Yosemite National Park. In the second lab, you will open a map project in ArcGIS Pro and create assignment maps for the emergency search operations. In the third lab, you will map where searchers have been deployed and what they have found. In the fourth lab, you will create a "clue log" that can be edited anywhere and with any device.SpatiaLABS are standalone activities designed to promote spatial reasoning and analysis skills. Covering a wide variety of subject matter useful in standard computer-lab sessions and longer term projects, SpatiaLABS illuminate relationships, patterns and complexities while answering provocative questions such as, "How might visibility have affected political boundaries in ancient civilizations?" or "Is there a connection between ethnicity and exposure to industrial toxins?" or "How worried should I be about the stagnant pond a quarter mile away?"

SpatiaLABS contain instructional materials in Microsoft Word and other common formats so that you can easily add self-assessment questions, adjust the context for the analysis, rework the lab to use local data, or otherwise customize them to suit your non-commercial needs. Check out these new labs and the others in the collection today!

Some of the compelling maps and data you will analyze in the Search and Rescue SpatiaLABS.